God Is All Knowing

[0:00] We've been going through the attributes of God over summer, and there are commonly three attributes described by the word omni, meaning all. And you'll know that God is omniscient, which is all-knowing. God is omnipotent, that is all-powerful, and God is omnipresent, which means he is everywhere all the time. We will be looking at these three over the next three weeks, starting today with omniscient. We've been mostly looking at what is known as the incommunicable attributes of God, the things that God does not share with his creation. For instance, communicable attributes, for instance, would be that God is merciful. God is kind, and likewise, he has made us to be merciful and kind. But as we look at God's omni-attributes, these are incommunicable, these things we are not supposed to try and imitate. So, while we can know things, and we can have power, and we can be present, we are not supposed to try and know everything or fix everything or be everywhere for everyone all the time. We are not all-knowing, we are not all-powerful, and we are not all-present. And so, we shouldn't try to be. Learning that God is, however, should humble us and should lead us to look to him and to depend on him. And just a wee side note, we should also learn to depend on one another a bit more. For our striving to be independent often does us more harm than good. It's really a thing that we struggle with is to be dependent on someone else. But it is actually better than this striving to always be independent.

[2:05] You see, not only does our resistance to accept help from others harm us, but it subtly teaches us not to depend on God. We need to learn to depend on one another. We're made for one another and for God. After all, do we think that God only sends us help by angels and not by other people? And so, God knows what we need, and very often he uses one another to provide that need and help and support.

[2:36] So, today we're going to consider God's omniscience, that is God is all-knowing. If you have a Bible, please turn to Psalm 139, and I'm going to read some verses from there as we consider this.

[3:12] Psalm 139. It was written to the choir master. It's a psalm of David, and he writes this. O Yahweh, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up.

[3:35] You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Yahweh, you know it all together.

[3:49] Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

[4:10] How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Amen. This is God's Word, and we pray that you would speak to us and bless the reading of it.

[4:25] What does God not know? We're going to explore this through three main points, and the first point we're going to explore by exploring what we do not know.

[4:40] So, point number one is, our lack of knowledge should humble us. Now, even in human terms, whatever you believe, whether you believe in God or whether you do not believe in God, whatever your belief, religion, whatever it is, even if you're an atheist, even in human terms, we know very little.

[5:01] Now, I used a powerful AI tool to calculate, research and calculate all the available databases, journals, documents, papers, scientific data, books, technical manuals, cultural knowledge, historical records from the beginning of the world, digital information, phone books, books, even the Argos catalog, everything, every kind of recorded data that we could possibly know, and then considering the brain capacity, degrees of learning and understanding and retention, and using all those things to calculate a very rough estimation, a very rough and generous estimate is that any single person can really only know around 0.0000006%, just of the things that humans have already learned.

[6:03] That is six one millionth of a percent. Six one millionth of a percent. Just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

[6:15] And that's before even considering the vast amount of unknown knowledge about our universe, which is much larger by many orders of magnitude. So, I thought, really, really infinitesimally small number of things that we know, that any one person, no matter how intelligent they are, any one person can know.

[6:39] But how can it illustrate this? How can it really visualize this for us? So, I want you to imagine, right, we've all held a one-pound coin. I want you to imagine a stack of one-pound coins.

[6:52] You all remember the old taxi drivers used to have stacks of coins. Imagine a stack of one-pound coins to represent the sum total of all human knowledge that has been learned so far.

[7:04] Okay, a stack of one-pound coins. And I want you to imagine a famous skyscraper, right, the Empire State Building, to illustrate how high that stack of coins would be.

[7:16] Okay? And now, the stack of coins to represent the cumulative human knowledge would be as high as 632 Empire State Buildings on top of one another.

[7:28] Okay, that's really, really high. 280 kilometers high, that stack of one-pound coins. That's 100 million one-pound coins.

[7:40] Now, the only reason, that's a lot of knowledge. It seems very high. And the only reason that it's so high is really just to help us illustrate and understand how little we know.

[7:51] Okay? So, of that stack of 100 million one-pound coins, reaching the height of 632 Empire State Buildings on top of one another, you and me and the brightest person on earth can really only possess six-pound coins worth out of that.

[8:10] Like, that is the sum total of human capacity. Six-pound coins worth out of all that that the humans have learned so far. That's not a lot. And it illustrates that any one person's knowledge, no matter how much we like to boast about what we know, any one person's knowledge is infinitesimally small.

[8:33] We don't know anywhere near as much as we think we know. And this is before even considering what God knows. So, when, as humans, we think that we know more than God, we are vastly overestimating ourselves, and we are completely missing the true nature of God.

[8:53] This is supposed to humble us. As Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, that knowledge has a tendency to do what? To puff us up. Knowledge has a tendency to puff us up.

[9:06] We become proud of what we think we know when we need to realize that what we know is very little. Very little. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

[9:17] So, Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 8, he goes on to say, if anyone imagines that he knows something, well, then he doesn't yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, then he is known by God.

[9:34] So, what is your aim in life? Just to know the most? Or to be known by God. If anyone thinks that he knows something, he doesn't really know anything.

[9:48] He doesn't know as he ought to know. But if anyone makes their aim to love God, then he is known by God. You see, we know so very little, even about a universe that can be measured.

[9:59] But God, being infinite, he cannot be measured. So, how much more should we approach God, the creator of this universe, with a large dose of humility?

[10:11] Considering how little we know about the things that can be known, we should approach God with humility. It's the only way to approach God. It's a dangerous thing that knowledge puffs up. Perhaps you've heard someone say something like this.

[10:24] I don't know if you have, but I've heard this plenty of times. If God was all-powerful and all-loving, then God would do this.

[10:35] But God cannot be all-powerful and all-loving because he does not do this. Fill in the blank. Have you ever heard someone say something like that?

[10:45] I've heard them say something like that. And basically what a person is saying when they say that is, because I do not see God doing what I think I should see him doing in the timescale and in the way that I think he should do it, then I conclude that God is not all-powerful and all-loving.

[11:05] How arrogant is that? I mean, we can't even accurately say that about another human being. We make assumptions all the time and we get it wrong. How can we say that about the God and creator of the universe?

[11:20] It is to rule out the infinitely more likely possibility that there are perhaps some things that we do not see, things that we do not know, and things that we simply do not understand.

[11:32] And so the Puritan, Stephen Charnock, puts this beautifully and poetically. He says this, Can you picture that?

[12:01] Imagine a little stream boasting of its water before a vast ocean. That's what we are like when we boast of our knowledge before God.

[12:12] Maybe God knows and sees things that we do not know and see. You see, nothing's hidden from God. There is nothing that He has not considered. And so we should approach one another with humility and definitely approach God with humility.

[12:26] If God is omniscient, not only should that humble us, but it should amaze us. And so that was the first point that we know so little. Our lack of knowledge should humble us.

[12:38] And the second point is, the perfect knowledge of God should amaze us. Romans 1.20 says that His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and His divine nature, have actually clearly been perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

[12:55] You see, God is not like a child rolling Play-Doh into random, unordered shapes. That's not what the God and Creator of the world is like.

[13:06] The things that He have made are astonishingly precise. And so whether it's the astonishingly precise balance of all the elements and the perfect distance between the earth and the sun to allow life, or whether it's the precise tilt of the earth and the speed that it spins, or the balance of the ratio between water, earth, and gas, or the irreducibly complex structure of a human cell, or the amazingly complex engineering of DNA, God knows it all inside out.

[13:44] Think of the things that God would have to know to create all of this. The entire creation screams out of an intelligent designer. Even a thing as simple as a pencil, which you illustrated, does not come about by chance.

[14:00] How much less? The city, if you look at a human cell, is like a city of working parts. God knows it all.

[14:11] And Romans 1 says that His signature is over every part of it. His signature is all over creation. And though we cannot see Him because He is invisible and He is spirit, His handiwork reveals His nature.

[14:27] And how amazed should we be? Psalm 147 says, God determines the number of the stars, and He gives to all of them their name. Great is our Lord and abundant in power.

[14:38] His understanding is simply beyond measure. Not only does He have perfect knowledge about everything He created, because He is eternal and timeless, He knows everything that will ever happen.

[14:50] For instance, it says in Ezekiel 11.5, I know the things that come into your mind. He doesn't need to wait until it comes into our mind before He knows it.

[15:02] As David says in Psalm 139, even before a word is on my tongue, you know it all together. Isaiah 44 says, I am the first and the last.

[15:13] Beside me there is no other God. Who is like me? Let Him proclaim it. Let Him declare and set it before me. Since I appointed an ancient people, let them declare what is to come and what will happen.

[15:28] Fear not, nor be afraid. Have I not told you from of old and declared it? Are you not my witnesses? Is there a God besides me? There is no rock.

[15:38] I know not any. God's knowledge is not bound by time. It is simultaneous, not successive. He sees everything all at once in all its fullness.

[15:50] His knowledge is instantaneously intuitive. You see, for us, things are broken up into individual successive propositions that we call facts.

[16:02] But to God, everything is simply known by a single undivided intuition. He just knows it completely. He doesn't have an infinite number of facts in His mind.

[16:14] Rather, He just knows everything fully, all at once, always. There is nothing we can say or do or think that He does not already know perfectly. There is no distant star that He doesn't know its name.

[16:27] There is no sparrow that He did not knit together. And there is no electron that moves without His energy. And there is no tear that rolls down your eye, your cheek, that He does not fully understand.

[16:40] Should we not be amazed? Now, if God is all-knowing, then think of this. He knows the secrets that we hide in the shadows of our hearts.

[16:51] He knows the full account before Him. How many things have we done wrong that we have forgotten about? And He knows the full account of our wrongdoing. And He knows the absolute worst about us.

[17:05] Even we do not realize the condition that we are in. But to Him, we are uncovered in His blinding light. And that should make us feel a little bit uneasy. Who among us is not guilty?

[17:18] Jesus would say, let him who has not sinned cast the first stone. Yet let us not think that we are going to surprise Him. You see, that's a comforting thing. There's nothing about you that's going to surprise God.

[17:30] He isn't suddenly going to recoil when He figures something out about you. He knows it. He already knows. He knew it fully even before He sent His Son to the cross.

[17:43] And so the third point is, He knows it all, yet still He loved. You see, we must say that what is true about God is true about Jesus and His divine nature.

[17:57] Consider Peter. Peter denied Jesus. But Jesus knew beforehand and He even told Peter, this is what you're going to do. And afterwards, when He restored Peter, He asked him, Simon Peter, do you love me?

[18:13] He asked him three times. And Peter says this, Lord, You know everything. You know everything. You know that I love you.

[18:25] You see, Peter learned that Jesus truly does know everything. If Peter knew that Jesus knew that He would deny Him, then He also knew, when Jesus was asking this, Peter also knew, Jesus, You know that I'm sorry and You know that I do love you.

[18:41] Jesus knows everything. Prior to the cross, Jesus knew the extent of our sin. The complete, full account of it.

[18:51] He knew it before He went to the cross. It didn't prevent Him from going to the cross. It didn't prevent Him from loving us and dying for us. In fact, it was the very reason that He went to the cross because He knew fully what our account was.

[19:08] And this is what J.I. Parker says in his book, Knowing God. He says, There is a tremendous relief in knowing His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion Him about me or quench His determination to bless me.

[19:31] Nothing about you will surprise God and nothing about you will quench His determination to bless you and give you life. You see, His purpose to change and transform us is not to make us more lovable because He loved us completely.

[19:48] rather, it's so that we are actually able to live and know Him and enjoy Him forever. If we are left in the state that we are, we will not enjoy Him forever and we will not have life because sin will take us to death.

[20:02] You see, the very doctrine that ought to make us fearful of sin is also the glorious foundation of our hope and assurance.

[20:15] It reassures our heart as John says in 1 John 3, for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and He knows everything. John says, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us.

[20:32] You see, it is not what we know but who we know. Paul says, if we imagine that we know something, we are fooling ourselves but if we love God, we will be known by God.

[20:46] Think about this, if you have ever seen one of these premieres, movie premieres or something like that where there are these big celebrities going in and there are crowds of fans shouting and screaming.

[20:59] Imagine this celebrity was able to look and pick one out. You see, everyone knows these celebrities but is everyone known by these celebrities? What would it be that they would know your name?

[21:11] That you would go to one of these things and they would say, your name, pick you out, want a relationship? Yeah, let him come in with me. If we love God, we will be known by God.

[21:23] To be known by the creator of the universe. Yes, He is omniscient. He knows everything about us. He knows us. But the point is, His knowledge is not just factual.

[21:34] His knowledge is relational. He wants a relationship with us. And so, to quote Packer again from his book, there is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God and God has known them and that this relationship guarantees God's favor to them in life through death and on forever.

[22:03] Paul had another way of saying that in Philippians 3, that all his achievements on earth are nothing compared with the astounding reality of knowing Christ, that his whole aim is that I may know Him.

[22:16] not that I'm already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own. And so, with all humility and fearful and joyful amazement, press on to know Christ who knows you completely and died for you freely.

[22:39] Let me pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, you know what is going to come out of our mouths even before we say it. You know what comes into our minds and you know the full account of our guilt and our wrongdoing and our sin, yet it did not stop you from putting on flesh and bones and going to the cross to die for us, to show us that you love us completely and to show us that life is in your Son, Jesus.

[23:06] Please help us, Lord, to not strive to know this or know that like we really know anything. but what an amazing thing it is that we can know you, that we can know you through Jesus, your Son, and that we can be fully known by Him.

[23:26] So help us to press on to knowing Christ and to having life and joy in His name. Amen.